* Bulgarian support for the EU is pretty low and people didn't think it made their life much better
* Bulgarian support for Russia is very high, like 50%, probably due to their historic help in kicking out the Turks
Child mortality is closer to Africa than Europe.
Again, about children, US has the second poorest children among the 35 most developed countries in the world.
More than half Americans have their literacy prophiciency below elementary level.
There's almost a million homeless people in US, that's more than in several rich countries like Japan, Italy, Poland, Germany, etc, combined. Hell I've never seen bidonvilles and tents all around cities in Europe or most of Asia like I've seen in LA or SF.
Inequality in US is at south America level.
US has more incarcerated population than all developed countries combined.
I did study at Ohio State for a semester and visited US multiple times tho.
Also, social mobility is preferable to inequality. Inequality is terrible on many levels.
Everyone is poor – low inequality (1)
Everyone is middle class – low inequality (2)
Many poor, few rich – high inequality (3)
Theoretical cases, not observed in the real world:
Few poor, many rich – high inequality (4)
Everyone is rich – low inequality (5)
The metric of "inequality" only scores well with either poverty (1) or average outcomes (2) in the real world. Is that socialism or communism? I forget.
Edit: Also third-world country mean something else completely since Turkey is first-world by original definition.
1. Many people have unrealistic expectations. In reality, no one is coming to save you, and 99% of the time, you need to save yourself.
2. The Russian propaganda story was taught in schools from 1945 to 1990 and beyond. When I was in elementary school in the 90s, it was still taught by inertia. I would bet it's still taught today, 2025 (!), in some shape or form. Yes, Russian actions in the late 1800s had the side-effect of liberating Bulgaria, but by all historical accounts, that was bound to happen since the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.
The most significant action taken by Russia (the Soviet Union) was the occupation of Bulgaria following World War II. The resulting communist regime initially jailed or killed any person who dared speak against it. This is not commonly taught or talked about in the country, even today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Court_(Bulgaria)
Credentials: I am Bulgarian.
That's whole modus operandi of russians entire 20th and 21st century. Really, a cancerous mole that wants to spread at all costs across the face of whole Europe, and the only thing it understands is the rule of stronger dog fucking the rest without a care.
I've grown up in communism too albeit a bit more north, a whole nation enslaved for more than 4 decades by russians. The scars this oppression had left on the soul of my nation are still very visible these days and not going away anytime soon. That depraved nation never even acknowledges atrocities it was doing and still keeps doing on a daily basis.
The saddest part they were very actively shooting/electrocuting people that were just trying to escape to the west, just to show to the rest of population its not worth dreaming of freedom in any way. A milder North korea. I guess dictator's playbooks are very similar everywhere.
Also, under under the Communist rule supported by USSR, they indoctrinated people into a version of history that Turks are the absolute evil, and Russians are the absolute angels saving them from the ottomans.
I.e. in pre-EU era it was called Ottoman slavery, later they start calling it Ottoman era as it was more accurate as Ottoman’s system was based on collecting taxes and resources from the conquered places when giving them plenty of autonomy. Obviously not ideal but far from slavery.
On the other hand Bulgarians and Turks teamed in wars after the forming of the new Bulgarian state.
Or a too well managed suppression.
“ We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.”
I don't think many say that at all outside of Turkey/Azerbaijan/Pakistan.
I recall reading the communications of some Ottoman officials trying to cash out the life insurance policies of the Armenians. Pure evil, honestly.
They didn't start with the idea of "let's kill everyone", it built up from the 1930s process to deport "undesirables", when it became too much work they decided to kill everyone instead.
Genocide is genocide, doesn't matter the seed that started it.
The difference is that the the ottomans didn’t have an anti-armenian culture going on and the Ottoman rule wasn’t being legitimized over stuff like “fighting a war against sleazy Armenians who infiltrated us”. It was quite the opposite, with rise of the nationalism in Europe minorities in the empire were the “anti”.
Ottomans didn’t do that because they believed in the inherent evil of the Armenians but because they were responding to those nationalistic movements. The distrust towards Armenians developed with the rebellions that were supported by Russia etc. Armenians weren’t targeted for their Armenianness. In other words none of this would have happened if there were no rebellions. It was done to address a specific problem, can you say the same for the holocaust? Was Hitler trying to address actual troubles that the Jewish minority caused?
Do you know who were/are targeted? The Alawites, it about the people would say things similar things like an anti-semite would say for the Jews. It’s also how you get instantly cancelled in Turkey.
The Armenian genocide is very much a resolved issue. No serious historian denies the genocide any more than he denies the holocaust.
Devshirme, Janissary corps, Batak massacre? There is huge blood debt that is owed to the Balkans and Armenia by the Ottoman Empire and their successor states.
BTW Just like the way Bulgarians may not recognize that the Bulgarian Empire had a military and killed people in order to take others stuff and force them into things they wouldn't do unless defeated through slathering each other, Turks also tend not to understand that institutions like Devshirme or Janissary weren't liked by the people subjected to those.
For example In their mind Devshirme was an education program that gave the opportunity to minority children to have great careers and indeed that was the result(they don't think about how those kids were taken into the program).
Similarly Janissary were elite units with lots of sway in the administration, in their minds Janissaries were spoiled soldiers that are hard to satisfy.
Also, all the wives of the sultans were women from minorities. In the Turkish mind they were lucky women with a lot of influence on the empire. An entire genre of soap operas are made around this and they are very popular in the countries that used to be under the Ottoman rule. Including Bulgaria.
Let's hope that we never go back to these days. Imperialism is evil and I'm sorry that Erdogan and other autocrats are trying to revive those days. I also agree that it was very offensive for the christians to turn Hagia Sofia into a mosque again(was a museum till recently) and I would love to see it becoming a church again.
Also, let's stop renaming stuff. If you like Istanbul you can move to Istanbul, if you want to own istanbul you can purchase a property in Istanbul.
This is not what it's about. It's not about the Turks being evil and Bulgarians et al being angels. It's about the fact that Turks refuse to accept responsibility.
Let me give you an example. I'm Romanian. There are many uneducated folks you'll meet in Romania who deny we killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in WW2. But no serious politician, historian, public figure, or educated person denies that.
The same is not true in Turkey. Pretty much everyone denies the Armenian Genocide.
All of us have shameful periods in our history, but some of us at least have the decency to not deny it.
But, of course, how could you see the genocide as evil when you can't even come to grips with the older Devshirme, a practice where boys were abducted, mutilated (circumcision), forced converted to Islam, executed if they were found praying to Jesus, and trained to fight and kill their own countrymen.
For anyone who is new to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...
[1]https://jacobin.com/2025/07/yanis-varoufakis-on-the-legacy-o...
It seems (from here), support for Russia is somehow magically going down as Russia’s economy is having trouble paying for its “support” abroad.
Cyprus ranks 17th and Greece 32nd
I don't think that's true ... growth is good, but that's because there's a lot of catching up to do. If I remember correctly (and maybe I don't) then real GDP is still like -20% vs 2007, debt is EU-leading at like 150% of GDP, unemployment remains high, and wages remain low.
Leading compared to what, Romania and North Macedonia?
> support for Russia is somehow magically going down
I don't think support for Russia was ever notably involved in the whole clusterfuck regarding the Greek economy.
Greece: 31695 (2008), 25756 (2025), 31014 (2030, projected)
Romania: 10435 (2008), 21421 (2025), 28809 (2030, projected)
Portugal managed to get out of the storm, and debt is now below GDP.
Greece took many bad steps trying to recover. And its debt shows that. Their governments have had a big part of the blame. Hell, at one point they didnt have enough money for citizens to withdraw from banks.
And that was before Troika.
Sure but so do the creditors. If you keep giving mortgages to anyone with a drivers license that's on you buddy.
At almost no point is there enough money for citizens to withdraw their money. Modern banks don't keep their assets as cash.
Isn't this the USA system?
This went swimmingly for everyone involved, with Greece now in more debt than ever (debt went from 145.45% of GDP to 209.40% of GDP). And fascist parties going from virtually non-existent to mainstays.
Adding low-efficiency countries like those in southeastern Europe is great for the EU's major exporter - Germany, because it adds more customers who have Euros, and because it devalues the Euro, which means more exports. Better yet, because of Euro the new joiners can't devalue their currency and get their exports high enough to restart the economy, with only viable option being more in debt and/or leaving for Germany, while obliterating the local industries. Win-win-win. For the EU exporters.
So, yes, let's celebrate Bulgaria joining Hotel EU, where food is great, your bill grows exponentially, but you can't ever leave. By the end you'll just end up as a pool boy.
That Greece accepted the terms reflected the reality that the alternative was much worse and would have caused great suffering for Greeks.
Varoufakis would argue the severe terms imposed by the creditors/negotiators exacerbated the fiscal issue. Yes Greece had issues but the creditors's terms exacerbated the problem, made things worse.
It's kind of like borrowing from a loan shark to pay off debts --on average, you're better off not. But hey, once you take it, you either pay up, or you lose something dear to you.
Every other european media outlet talked about greeks (in very racist way) as lazy nation that doesnt want to work.
Not great look for EU. But i dont know about better alternative.